Since the upcoming consoles are a pretty big topic at the moment, I thought I'd get off my chest what I really want next-gen. Screw million polygon people, and AAx16, the most important thing would be cutting down on load times.
Tengai Makyou III came out today in Japan and while I personally haven't bought it, the people who have are talking about what a mess the game is. Hudson comes up with these great graphics, an original rpg battle system, and a stylish world to explore, yet load times turn what could've been a solid game into an unplayable mess. Everytime you enter a room or leave it you get long loadtimes, accessing menus = load times, fighting battles = load times. Basically every 5-45 secs of playing you're sitting waiting for a 5-10 sec load. This is retarded, and sadly this game is not one of the only casualties of load times. Sony's Popolocrois III for example has 45sec+ load times before every random battle which destroys a game that otherwise would've been a great (albiet short) adventure. Many other examples of horrible game destroying loading exist in the last 2 generations.
Now for the most part GC's disc format/system specs allowed minimal load times to the point where I don't think loading has ever been painful in a GC game. But sadly, the system that actually had the potential to eradicate load times was also the system that was incredibly lacking in 3rd party support and total games.
So basically, I really hope that the next wave of consoles are able to cut down load times to near GC level of loading. Especially which ever system becomes the major rpg system. I think in terms of loading, rpg fans have it the worst as rpgs require tons of loading in and out of random battles which are frequent occurences. I don't care whether xbox 360 or PS3 or Revolution wins next gen, and I don't care which one ends up being the rpg leader, I just don't want a repeat of the PS1 and PS2's often crappy loading effecting the majority of rpg titles. For the people who are actualy keeping track of all the tech stats of the systems, how is the future looking for load times?
Tengai Makyou III came out today in Japan and while I personally haven't bought it, the people who have are talking about what a mess the game is. Hudson comes up with these great graphics, an original rpg battle system, and a stylish world to explore, yet load times turn what could've been a solid game into an unplayable mess. Everytime you enter a room or leave it you get long loadtimes, accessing menus = load times, fighting battles = load times. Basically every 5-45 secs of playing you're sitting waiting for a 5-10 sec load. This is retarded, and sadly this game is not one of the only casualties of load times. Sony's Popolocrois III for example has 45sec+ load times before every random battle which destroys a game that otherwise would've been a great (albiet short) adventure. Many other examples of horrible game destroying loading exist in the last 2 generations.
Now for the most part GC's disc format/system specs allowed minimal load times to the point where I don't think loading has ever been painful in a GC game. But sadly, the system that actually had the potential to eradicate load times was also the system that was incredibly lacking in 3rd party support and total games.
So basically, I really hope that the next wave of consoles are able to cut down load times to near GC level of loading. Especially which ever system becomes the major rpg system. I think in terms of loading, rpg fans have it the worst as rpgs require tons of loading in and out of random battles which are frequent occurences. I don't care whether xbox 360 or PS3 or Revolution wins next gen, and I don't care which one ends up being the rpg leader, I just don't want a repeat of the PS1 and PS2's often crappy loading effecting the majority of rpg titles. For the people who are actualy keeping track of all the tech stats of the systems, how is the future looking for load times?
